This is what Xueyu said today. I remembered the setting in "in time" again. As a social confuse, when encountering such a fun setting, I can't help but sci-fi, or YY.
At first glance, the doctrine of six reincarnations has nothing to do with the setting of "life-span capitalism". After careful consideration, there are actually many things in common. Tian Ren has an extremely long life and is full of happiness, just like the ruling class. Hells, beasts and hungry ghosts are rushing for survival every moment, suffering all the time, and their lives are short. This is exactly like the situation of lower-level laborers. More importantly, they have no time to reflect on and improve their lives and get free. This is roughly the same as the sci-fi essay I wrote two days ago.
The key to the Six Paths is the liberation of the human world. Man is a bittersweet sentiment, who can cherish good fortune because of suffering, and seek the way because of blessing. Human beings have the desire for liberation (unlike heaven and man, as Marcuse said, it is meaningless to talk about liberation for free men), There are also resources for liberation. If we eliminate the supernatural meaning in the six realms of reincarnation, or extend our "society" to the supernatural level, then "people" are equivalent to the so-called "middle class". In the interim, they have both the possibility of downward flow and the possibility of upward climb.
Going back to "in time", the question that has been circling in my mind for the past two days is this: Assuming that such a society really exists, can it continue to operate?
The existence of any society mostly depends on a stable class that accounts for the majority of the population. The scholars, farmers, commerce, and industry in the feudal society, and the workers, peasants, soldiers, academics and commerce in a socialist society belong to the middle part of this sandwich structure and maintain the basics of the society. Running. Is it possible for such a class to exist in the stage of "lifetime capitalism"? In other words, will society divide infinitely and eventually lead to disintegration?
To maintain society, at least two kinds of reproduction must be ensured, namely material and human beings. Human reproduction depends on the fertility system. In the stage of "lifetime capitalism", will the total population of society increase or decrease? It stands to reason that people will never die, and there are still marriages and childbirths. Then the population of the earth should be more and more. So either social production collapses or the ecosystem collapses. Such catastrophic consequences are not hard to imagine. That's why the designers of "Life Capitalism" designed an exit mechanism. Let's call it a "virtual life system." We say "virtual" because life has become a symbol of science and technology rather than a natural one at this stage. "Birth, old age, sickness and death" has become a man-made design and a part of the social system. The exit mechanism faced by the lower class is imminent, and this urgency forces them to engage in the material reproduction necessary for this society. The surplus value of this circular output, including material and lifespan, becomes the profit of the upper class. This is the solution mechanism shown to us by the film.
But there are two problems with this model, both of which are related to fertility. First of all, the film doesn't seem to set any fertility restrictions on the upper strata, so the infinite expansion of the upper strata population will eventually lead to the social food chain from a pyramid to an inverted pyramid, and ultimately lead to destruction? Secondly, according to the film, the lower-class population still maintains the marriage and birth mechanism of the pre-lifetime capitalist era. In fact, I think they may not have time to give birth at all. After all, if you are faced with only one year of life after the age of 25, what woman would be willing to spend 10 months to give birth to the next generation Woolen cloth? Even if the upper strata use life expectancy as a reward for fertility in order to maintain the lower demographic base, it may be difficult for them to be effective. Because the two main fertility motivations of life extension and old-age care will be greatly weakened-in the face of such a miserable life, it is difficult for people to have the urge to reproduce, and if physical strength does not decline, naturally there will be no old-age care. problem. Therefore, the key to the continuation of life-span capitalism seems to lie in the issue of fertility.
But take a perspective and consider the whole. People who have been genetically modified will not die naturally, only accidentally. In principle, the society as a whole does not have a big demand for fertility. The key is to control the fertility rate of the upper and lower levels. Let those who can work have more, and those who don't have less. In this way, we should not be too cruel against the lower class, so that they can relatively feel the happiness of life, and they can have time to start a family besides "running", and since there is even time to start a family, I am afraid there is nothing to prevent those who do not want to have children from using the same leisure time to improve themselves and achieve upward mobility. The middle class and social mobility are the key to the operation of any society, and the same must be true for a "lifetime capitalist" society to continue to operate.
For the upper echelons, birth control may be a difficult problem to solve. After all, an immortal person is supposed to have no need to have children, but the threat of accidental death may still make people have the urge to leave offspring. His descendants also have this kind of consideration, and the population expansion can be imagined.
To solve this problem, you have to go back to the Dharma at the beginning. For Buddhism, life in this world is not necessarily worth enjoying. Rather, it is a stage full of pain and need to be liberated. In the film, life is regarded as a treasure for everyone, and immortality is regarded as bliss, which is probably the presupposition of Christian civilization. In fact, the quality of life is equally important. The only way to control the aforementioned trend of social polarization is to make a reasonable combination of the length and quality of life.
To put it simply, the longer a person lives, the more responsibilities he has to bear, and the shorter he lives, the more opportunities he has to evade responsibility. Most people in a society can only live to a relatively reasonable age. After this age, they have only two ways out. One is to undertake the relatively heavy and dangerous work in the society and replace all members with their own experience. Deal with these issues. The other is to completely break away from society, to live in seclusion in the mountains and forests, and live by one's own strength. And this "relatively reasonable age", like the tax threshold in our current society, is constantly adjusted with the situation of the entire society, transforming "equalization of the rich and the poor" into "equal life." Only in this way can human nature be coordinated with high technology, and a society that can be in harmony with life and nature and maintain a stable operation can be reproduced.
The result of cranky thinking is that the "life-span capitalist" society in "in time" may not exist for a long time. According to the plan I designed, there is still a danger of crashing. For example, in religion, will anyone take advantage of everyone's insecurity to form a sect that "lives evenly"? The people who joined all turned over their lives, then redistributed them, and implemented a high degree of communism internally. In the end, everyone went to the pure land of life. Only the leader, living alone forever in the world... deserves it.
How many interesting social phenomena will arise in such a society!
It seems that I'm in a state of being in a state of chaos when commenting on "Three-Body" again... Duh, stop!
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